La Cocachina
by Kiril Selverov
Summary: A teenager with an unusual phobia dies a mysterious death. A quick initial investigation points to a mundane cause. A deeper look, however, reveals an increasingly complex underlying story, which takes Mulder and Scully to a high speed chase through the desert to try to save the life of another teenager.
1. Chapter 1 - Tony Crane

La Cocachina

Seidel Memorial Hospital, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 9 am

Tony Crane's ragged gray sneakers squeaked on the shiny marble floor of the North Wing of Seidel Memorial Hospital. Had there been any patients in the corridor, they would have turned their heads and winced at the annoying sound. This was, however, a wing that had the luxury of being devoid of crowds. Uncovered medical care was not for everyone's pocket.

Tony's mother, Mrs. Elise Crane, walked silently beside Tony. She was petite, with shoulder-length black hair and fine features that gave her the appearance of a French noblewoman. She wore an elegant light green suit that outlined her proportional body. Despite her quiet, inconspicuous demeanor, she emanated an air demanding respect.

Next to her, Tony looked like a giant, his thin, athletic figure towering at least a foot over her. His teenage face, still lacking facial hair, clearly showed the family resemblance. His black hair was also shoulder-length. He looked like a taller, muscular, male version of his mother.

The two stood in front of a heavy wooden door with an engraved plaque.

Dr. Henry Walsh, M.D., Ph.D.

Psychiatrist

Mrs. Crane looked up at Tony and gently held his forearm.

"Ready?"

Tony did not feel ready. He did not want to be there at all. But the rational part of him understood that this visit was necessary. He could not move on with his life otherwise. There was a problem that he could no longer ignore. He was doing the reasonable, rational thing. He was choosing to face his problem in the presence of a skilled medical professional. He swallowed and nodded silently.

Dr. Walsh turned out to be a distinguished-looking gentleman with short, graying hair and tanned, clean shaven face. He sat in his soft leather armchair, hands crossed on his lap, as the duo seated themselves across from him on a matching leather couch. The solid, oak coffee table between them matched the heavy bookcase and desk next to the window. The wide wooden blinds were half-drawn, but the semi-darkness was partially dispersed by the orange light of a salt-lamp sitting on an oak nightstand. The thick Persian rug completed the cozy comfort of the room, which emanated the air of professionalism and wealth.

Dr. Walsh' voice was soft and reassuring.

"Let me explain some things first, Tony," he said. "You have what is commonly referred to as _phobia_ , or fear. To you, this fear feels very real. We will start by accepting that fact. While the reasons _why_ you feel this way are important, they are not our goal just yet. Our goal is to acknowledge that this fear exists, and to work toward confronting it. The good news is, you are not alone. I am here to help you."

Tony watched him silently.

"Phobias are not unusual," Dr. Walsh continued. "In fact, most people experience phobias of varying degrees at some point in their lives. Sometimes, phobias can be traced to past experiences. Other times, they appear to be random."

He leaned confidentially toward Tony.

"I had a phobia when I was a child too," he said. "I was afraid of dripping water. It terrified me. I had nightmares about it. As an adult now - and a doctor - I could speculate that maybe this fear had something to do with my toilet training. But this is not what mattered in the end. What mattered was that I was able to confront my fear, and to eradicate it."

Dr. Walsh' grey eyes rested unblinkingly on Tony's soft brown ones.

"You, too, can eradicate your fear," he said. 'I am here to make that happen. As your doctor, can assure you that you are absolutely safe."

Tony closed his eyes as the needle pricked his upper arm. Instantly, his body relaxed and he slumped to his side. Dr. Walsh caught him gently and laid him down on the couch as Tony drifted into sleep. Mrs. Crane watched, her striking face creased by deep lines of concern.

"Did you bring a new pair as we discussed?" asked Dr. Walsh. Mrs. Crane nodded. She took out a cardboard box out of the black plastic bag she was carrying. From the box, she retrieved a pair of new gray Nike sneakers.

"These are the closest ones I could find that looked like his," she said. "They are his size."

Dr. Walsh walked over to his desk. "The patient is ready," he said into the phone.

Four staff members dressed in blue scrubs walked in, wheeling in a stretcher. They placed Tony on the stretcher and rolled him out of the office, Dr. Walsh and Mrs. Crane following at their heels.

"I've administered anesthesia," explained Dr. Walsh as they walked along the marble corridor. "He'll be asleep when we replace his 'lucky' sneakers with the new ones. Then, it's just a matter of breaking the news to him."

"And when he wakes up and finds out his lucky sneakers are gone?"

"His feet will be covered," said Dr. Walsh. "He will wake up relaxed and light headed. He won't know we've made a switch."

"How will we tell him?"

"Carefully," said Dr. Walsh. "But - leave that part to me."

The new room looked much more like a typical hospital room. Monitors lined the walls. Cables with electrodes hung from a metal arm hanging above a hospital bed.

The staff members lifted Tony off the stretcher and transferred him to the bed. Mrs. Crane watched them tensely as they pulled Tony's arms and legs to the side and secured them with straps to the edge of the bed.

"Precaution," explained Dr. Walsh as Mrs. Crane eyed a silent question to him.

An IV was inserted into Tony's left arm. Electrodes were placed on his body to monitor his vitals. Mrs. Crane stood by, arms holding her elbows tightly.

Dr. Walsh assumed his position by Tony's feet, which were shod in a pair of torn, worn-out gray sneakers that looked as if they'd fall apart any moment.

"Here goes nothing," he said.

He started to untie a shoelace. The moment he touched Tony's sneaker, Tony shook, opened his eyes and screamed in horror. He looked at his strapped arms, struggled to free himself, strained his muscles, and the strap tying his right arm snapped. Dr. Walsh' staff jumped on him and fought to keep his arm down.

Tony was screaming.

"What is happening?!" shrieked Mrs. Crane over the loud screams.

"A few more milligrams!" shouted Dr. Walsh. Someone inserted a syringe in the IV bottle hanging above Tony. Tony slumped again, and again drifted into sleep. But this time, his sleep was disturbed. He breathed heavily as if in a delirium.

"What happened!? Why did he wake up!?" Mrs. Crane was crying now.

Dr. Walsh seemed shaken by the unexpected outburst. "I don't know," he muttered, shaking his head. "I've never seen this happen before. Not after the amount of anesthesia I'd given him. He should have been asleep."

Again he reached for the boy's sneaker. This time, he managed to untie Tony's shoelace and pull Tony's left sneaker off. Out came a foot wrapped in a blood-soaked sock. Again, Tony's body convulsed and he woke up. He screamed again and struggled to get himself free.

Mrs. Crane rushed towards him, but a staff member held her away. Three other staff members held Tony down. Containing him was becoming difficult. He seemed to have gained enormous strength. More anesthetic was added to the IV, but it seemed to have no effect on Tony.

Tony was screaming out of control. Mrs. Crane collapsed in the corner of the room, crying. The fourth staff member rushed to help the rest. Dr. Walsh did not wait longer. While his staff held Tony down, he untied Tony's second sneaker and pulled it off. Another bloody foot came out.

Tony no longer showed any signs of being sedated despite the additional drugs. He thrashed and struggled against the four staff members holding him down. The monitors above his head displayed violent curves.

"Shall we give him more?" someone shouted.

"We can't!" Dr. Walsh was helping the four hold Tony down as well. "Anything more will kill him!"

"Why isn't he asleep?"

"I don't know… I don't know!"

Tony was struggling to break free with incredible strength.

And suddenly - it was over. Tony's body tensed up and stopped moving. The staff members let go of him and stepped back. A continuous beep filled the sudden silence in the room. It came from the monitor above Tony's head displaying his heart activity. The erratic sinusoidal curves previously displayed there were moving to the left, pushed out by a flat line at zero microVolts.


	2. Chapter 2 - The Case

In the passenger's seat of the FBI Ford rental, special Agent Dana Scully raised her gaze from the open folder in front of her. She was dressed in a comfortable two-piece black business suit, slightly wrinkled from the flight from Washington DC, and her shoulder-length, copper-colored hair was down, arranged neatly in a professional coiffure. She lifted an eyebrow in an expression of skeptical surprise.

"A teenager terrified to take off his shoes?"

Having been part of the X-files unit of the FBI which investigated phenomena that defied logical explanation, she was no stranger to the extraordinary and unusual. Still, every new case seemed to carry a surprise. She was a medical doctor and a scientist. She worked with facts. Her role had always been to ensure that X-files investigations were scientifically rigorous.

"Keep reading," urged Special Agent Fox Mulder. Dressed in his usual black suit, complete with a formulaic red tie that screamed _FBI agent_ , he was the one driving, while Scully familiarized herself with the contents of the folder.

Scully read aloud.

"Anthony Terrence Crane, 16 years old. Diagnosed with acute manic phobia, possibly bordering schizophrenia. Admitted for psychiatric treatment at Seidel Memorial Hospital. Dr. Henry Walsh. I know him, he's a known name in modern Psychiatry, works very high profile cases. Anesthesia, what looks like an amount enough to knock out a small elephant. Walsh tried to take off the boy's shoes. Violent reaction, convulsions, superhuman strength." She eyed a question at Mulder. " _Superhuman_? "

"Four strong men plus an athletic doctor barely held the boy down," explained Mulder. He did not have a problem accepting the unusual as a starting point. He kept what he referred to as an 'open mind'. For Scully, this meant that he did not dismiss anything outright, no matter now far-fetched it sounded.

"People have been known to triple their strength under stressful circumstances," Scully said matter-of-factly. "There's nothing superhuman about that." Her scientific perspective provided the needed counterpoint to Mulder's frequently unreserved acceptance of unbelievable facts.

She finished reading and looked up.

"The boy… died!? From having his shoes taken off?"

"He did," said Mulder.

"That doesn't make sense," observed Scully.

"Hence why _we_ are investigating," pointed out Mulder. Cases that made sense were handled by law enforcement agents who fit the traditional mold — diligent, meticulous, procedure-driven and lacking imagination. It was the bizarre and baffling ones that required thinking outside the box. Those were the cases that made their way to the only entity equipped to handle them: the X-files unit of the FBI.

Scully shrugged, accepting his reasoning. "Poor kid…" she sighed, looking at the included picture of a smiling, casually-handsome teenager with smooth baby face, deep brown eyes and tousled black hair.

"Not that poor, actually," said Mulder. "The mother, Mrs. Elise Crane, widow of the late Mr. Archibald Crane, founder of Crane Pharmaceuticals, is said to be worth at least several billion. She paid out of pocket for one of the best psychiatrists in the country to treat her boy."

"Shows you money doesn't buy everything," noted Scully. She looked up and down the document. "There's no cause of death?"

"They are waiting for _you_ to autopsy the boy," said Mulder, "At my request."


	3. Chapter 3 - Cause of Death

Mrs. Crane sobbed inconsolably stooped at the edge of Dr. Walsh' leather couch.

"He _promised_ Tony would be fine. He _assured_ him. He assured _me_. He seemed he knew what he was doing. I am suing for malpractice!"

"As is your right under the circumstances," agreed Mulder. Tall and well-built, he looked enormous standing next to the small Mrs. Crane, who appeared even smaller with her face buried in her tiny hands.

"Still," Mulder added cautiously, "Dr. Walsh followed protocol. My partner interviewed him and confirmed his side of the story."

"I don't _care_ what he followed," snapped Mrs. Crane. "Tony's dead. Walsh must have done something wrong."

"I suggest we wait until my partner comes back with the conclusions of her investigation. She is finishing the autopsy as we speak. She is an expert."

"An expert in what?"

"We specialize in cases that deal with the paranormal," said Mulder.

"Paranormal?" Mrs. Crane was taken aback. "Mr. Mulder, I don't need a witch doctor. I need someone who can help me find out what happened to my son."

"My partner is an experienced physician as well as an FBI agent. I can assure you, the investigation will be scientifically rigorous."

"Your _partner_ ," there was pointed emphasis in Mrs. Crane's tone, "may be all you have been saying, but I care about _results_! I need to know what is being done to determine _conclusively_ why my son is dead. So, apart from your partner's resume qualifications, is there anything more that you two have to offer?"

Mulder sighed, "Mrs. Crane..."

But she had already realized the inappropriateness of her tone.

"I am so sorry…" she said, shaking her head. And then she was crying again, new tears falling in large droplets on the floor. "Why did this have to happen? Why? First, my husband. And then Tony. He was our only child, the only family I had left..."

Mulder sat next to her on the couch careful no to interrupt.

"He was such a nice boy," she continued. "Quiet. Academic. And then, about a year ago, he bought these unfortunate sneakers."

She spoke more to herself than to Mulder, her hazel eyes staring forward into nothingness.

"At first, there was nothing unusual," she said, shrugging her shoulders as if she was convincing herself of that fact. "A teenage boy with new sneakers, no big deal. But as time went on, he wore them more than what anyone would consider normal."

It had been a year earlier, July. Tony had come home from school in the late afternoon, his blue basketball jersey and black shorts soaked in sweat. He'd headed for the fridge and spent a good minute peering inside it.

 _Whatcha looking for?_ Mrs. Crane had asked, looking up from the book she had been reading in the sunny glass room next to the kitchen.

 _Coke_ , Tony had replied.

 _I don't think we have Coke_ , she had said. _But we have the chicken nuggets you like. Wanna tell Marta to warm up some for you before dinner's ready?_ Marta was the housekeeper. She had been preparing dinner in the larger kitchen in the western wing of their large Victorian house.

 _Not right now_ , Tony had said and run back out. He had come back half an hour later.

 _Where'd you go?_ Mrs. Crane had asked him.

 _Come on, Mom, since when do you keep track of me?_ he had joked. She had shrugged it off. Tony was a teenager. That's how teenagers behaved.

He had gone to his room and changed his sweat-soaked jersey and shorts, but had not taken off his sneakers.

 _Aren't you gonna take these off?_ Mrs. Crane had asked.

Tony had stared down at his sneakers as if in contemplation.

 _These are the best sneakers ever!_ he had said after a while. _I played basketball today. Scored 60 points._

 _That's great, honey!_ Mrs. Crane had tried to be encouraging. _All that jumping in the backyard is paying off!_

 _It's not the practicing, Mom_ , Tony had said. _It's these sneakers. They help me jump real high. Higher than ever. Higher than anyone else._

 _OK, get yourself one more pair then_ , she had said, _but take them off at home, for God's sake! You are not going to wear them all the time, are you?_

 _Maybe I will,_ he had said, giving her a wink and heading back to his room.

"He wanted to get another pair, but he couldn't" Mrs. Crane told Mulder. "They had discontinued this model. So, he clung to the only pair he had. He wore them even at home. At first, the whole thing was funny, an internal joke for both of us. 'Are you going to bed with your sneakers on?' 'Yeah, Mom, thanks for the idea!' There were still occasional times when he took them off. But, as time went by, he started to wear them all the time. When I pushed him to take them off, he would get angry and retreat to his room."

She remembered the day when it had dawned on her that Tony's infatuation with his sneakers had escalated to the level of an obsession. He had refused to take them off with firmness she did not expect, and she had reacted by lashing out at him.

 _Tony, this is getting ridiculous! Take these shoes off and let Marta wash them! And your socks – how long haven't you changed these? I can smell them from here._

Tony had looked visibly disturbed.

 _Mom..._

 _What?_

 _I can't,_ he had said gravely.

 _You can't what?_

 _I can't take them off._

 _What do you mean? Why?_

Tony had just shaken his head slowly. _I need to keep them on all the time, he had said. All the time, Mom._

He had gotten up to go to his room. Mrs. Crane had blocked his way.

 _Tony, you are not making any sense. You have to take off your shoes at some point!_

Tony had stared at her, his body shaking.

 _If I do,_ he had said, pronouncing the words slowly, deliberately, _I will die..._

"He was so fixated and unbending that I started to fear for his life if I were to push him more," said Mrs. Crane. "He told me that he would die if he took his sneakers off. I took that as a threat. I thought he was threatening to take his own life. Naturally, I backed off. But I was terrified! Terrified and desperate! I contacted the most prominent psychiatrist I could find. And I was so relieved when Tony actually agreed to see him. And today..." tears were dropping from her eyes. "Today, I lost him... Tony was right! Dr. Walsh took his sneakers off, and he died!"

Mulder put his hand on Mrs. Crane's shoulder just as Scully was walking in with a blue folder in her hand.

"Dr. Walsh' lawyers blocked further access to him," she said.

"It figures," said Mrs. Crane.

"Thankfully, I was able to talk to him earlier," said Scully.

"Mrs. Crane, this is my partner, Dana Scully," introduced her Mulder. Scully extended a hand and sat on a chair across the two of them. With her shoulder-length hair and black business suit, and being of shorter build herself, Scully resembled a slightly larger, copper-haired version of Mrs. Crane. For a second, Mulder mused at the juxtaposition. _The Queen of Diamonds and Queen of Spades_ , he thought.

"So..." Mrs. Crane started hesitantly, "did you find out...?" Her voice shook slightly in an expression of both expectation and fear.

Scully nodded. "Yes, Mrs. Crane, I have the cause of death." She handed Mrs. Crane the blue folder she was holding. "Tony died of an overdose of cocaine."

There was a moment of silence. Then, Mrs. Crane exploded, her unexpectedly strong voice carrying across the empty corridors of the North Wing of the Seidel Memorial Hospital.

"The murderous son of a bitch!"

Scully shook her head, "If you are referring to Dr. Walsh, he was not the one who injected Tony with cocaine. His story checks out with the medical records and the test results. He only administered anesthesia."

"What are you saying?"

"The cocaine was in Tony's system hours before you and Tony came to Dr. Walsh' office," said Scully.

Mrs. Crane stared at Scully. "I don't understand. How did Tony get it then? Who gave it to him?"

Scully sighed. "There's no evidence to suggest that there was anyone else involved," she said. "Maybe there was someone who helped your son get the cocaine, but most likely Tony himself injected himself with it."

Mrs. Crane fixed her hazel eyes on Scully. "Are you implying Tony did drugs?"

"All indications point to that," said Scully.

Mrs. Crane was shaking her head in disbelief. "That's not possible. I knew my son. He was a good kid. Intelligent. He was great in sports. He had excellent grades. I would have known."

Scully didn't reply.

"We were close," argued Mrs. Crane, more to herself than to Scully. "He shared as much as any kid his age shares with his mother, especially after his father passed away."

"I know it must be hard to accept," said Scully softly. "But facts are facts." She pointed at the report. "Tony had a critically high concentration of cocaine in his blood when he walked into Dr. Walsh' office. It is surprising that he was even able to make it that far."

Mrs. Crane slumped on the couch. "I was with him," she said weakly. "He looked completely normal."

She sat there, helpless. "Drugs need money, don't they?" she asked.

Scully did not respond but exchanged glances with Mulder.

"I know what you are thinking," fired back Mrs. Crane. "Yes, we are not exactly middle class. Still, I wasn't raised rich, and I didn't raise my son that way either. I kept track of his spending. He didn't buy things he didn't need. He bought basketball jerseys, chewing gum and Coke."

" _Coke_!?" Mulder and Scully exclaimed together.

"Coke... as in Coca Cola!" Mrs. Crane clarified angrily.

"I am sorry," apologized Scully. "It just that it sounded like..."

Mrs. Crane took a deep breath and recomposed herself. "No, _I_ am sorry. I am not myself. I can't believe he's gone. How does one take coke - cocaine anyway? Injections?"

Scully nodded. "It appears," she said, "that he injected the bottom of his feet."

She took the blue folder from Mrs. Crane and flipped through the pages pointing at some of the autopsy pictures. The bottoms of Tony's feet showed numerous bloody wounds. It was evident that they had been punctured with something sharp.

Mrs. Crane shook in horror. "Why...?"

"I don't know. Probably to avoid detection. Needles leave traces. The puncture holes would be visible on his arms or other parts of his body. I suppose not many people examine the bottom of someone feet."

"Doesn't this... hurt?"

Scully nodded quietly. She put her hand on Mrs. Crane's. "I am so very sorry Mrs. Crane."

"My poor baby..." cried Mrs. Crane. "It must have hurt even when he simply walked. At every step."

She buried her face in her hands again and shook in silent sobbing while Mulder watched on, his light brown eyes averted inward in rapt contemplation.


	4. Chapter 4 - Pieces Don't Fit

Mulder drove the FBI Ford rental in silence, fiercely chewing on sunflower seeds and discarding the empty shells in the coupe's cup holder, his eyebrows locked in concentration. Sunflower seeds were one of his few healthy habits. He had acquired the compulsion back at the University of Oxford, where, taking six classes a semester, he had graduated at the top of his class with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. During these several years of intense work, something had to give. He had gotten away with a prestigious degree, an irregular sleep schedule, and an addiction to sunflower seeds. Somehow, they focused his thoughts in a way nothing else could.

Scully interrupted his silence.

"OK, Mulder, what is it?"

"What is what?"

"Why are you giving me the silent treatment?"

Mulder looked at her surprised. "I am thinking about the case," he said.

"You are not saying there is more to investigate, are you? For _us_ anyway. There will be police work of course. Track the source of the drugs, find who was responsible to get Tony into the habit. But this is not something the FBI should be concerned about."

"Are you happy with your conclusions?" His question sounded more like a challenge.

"They make sense," Scully defended herself. "A kid starts to take drugs. This changes his life. Suddenly, he is better in sports - that's how doping works. He becomes popular. Tries to hide his addiction by injecting himself on the bottom of his feet. At about the same time he gets a pair of sneakers. He starts to associate the sneakers with his popularity, and with the highs he gets from the drugs. Over time, he doesn't want to part with the sneakers. For him, they are the reason for the way he feels. It's the old Pavlovian dog-and-a-bell operant conditioning."

"Except that his mother doesn't think he takes drugs," pointed out Mulder. "She knew Tony well."

Scully gave him a curt smile. "Have you done drugs Mulder?" she asked.

"I went to college," said Mulder. "So did you."

"Did you tell your mother you tried drugs?"

"No, but that's not really the point. Mrs. Crane did not say she expected Tony to tell her the truth about taking drugs. She just said she didn't see how he could have done that. She kept track of where he spent his money. Also, the kid behaved normally. He did well in school. He was an outstanding athlete. He was only combative when someone threatened to take off his sneakers. He went to Dr. Walsh voluntarily. How many drug addicts do you know who have that kind of M.O.?"

Scully stared through the car window, watching shopping malls and billboards fly by as they drove along I-83.

"I don't know," she said, "but with the amount of cocaine they found in his blood, he must have been sky high."

"And yet, he did not show any signs of it when he went to the doctor with his mother this morning," argued Mulder. "He went there with the intention to get help. He only started to behave abnormally when his sneakers were taken off. Abnormal to the extreme, Scully. He died, just as he had _said_ he would if his shoes were taken off."

Scully shook her head. "Tony died from an overdose of cocaine, Mulder. No one dies from having his sneakers taken off."

" _He_ did," said Mulder stubbornly.

He took a sudden turn onto an exit ramp that caught Scully unprepared. She held on to the dashboard as she swayed on the passenger seat and then steadied herself as the ramp straightened up and merged with a smaller street.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To get an expert opinion," smiled Mulder slyly.

He navigated several small streets, turned a corner, and stopped in front of what looked like a warehouse on a dilapidated street in the middle of an industrial district.


	5. Chapter 5 - Expert Opinion

Minutes later, Scully found herself standing in the middle the new headquarters of the three publishers of the Lone Gunman expository publication. She had met the three socially awkward conspiracy theorists and friends of Mulder before. Mulder often leveraged their technology expertise and their rather dubious spying skills to get answers he typically was not entitled to.

The new headquarters comprised of a medium-sized windowless bunker room, with gray walls, low ceiling and industrial-looking metal shelves outlining the room's perimeter. The shelves overflowed with electronic devices, monitors, repair tools, kitchen items, blankets, garden equipment, camping and scuba diving gear, and countless gadgets of unknown utility. The only wall area not used for storage was the heavy metal door with eight locks through which Mulder and Scully had walked in and which closed shut behind them with an ominous thud. Scully eyed the locks apprehensively.

A flimsy plastic cart in the middle of the room appeared to be serving simultaneously as a server rack, a work desk, and an occasional dinner table. The three publishers removed from it several stacks of folders, a greasy pizza box, and half a dozen interconnected devices with blinking green equalizers, which they cautiously carried to the room corner taking care not to disturb the crisscrossed wires that linked them. Once the cart's top was clear, Mulder placed on it an old, torn, gray sneaker, size ten.

Scully shook her head with disapproval.

"I can't believe you took evidence from the crime scene, Mulder," she frowned.

"This is _our_ case, Scully. We are still investigating."

The shortest of the three publishers, Melvin Frohike, dressed in a black leather jacket and wearing oversize round glasses, took a laser scanner and passed it over the inside of the sneaker. The scanner beeped.

The tallest of the three, Richard "Ringo" Langly, turned to look at a screen behind him through his own wide-rimmed spectacles.

"We have it," he said. "The barcode is still good." His long, blond, albeit observably unwashed hair partly covered the print on the back of his new-age T-shirt bought at a science fiction convention fifteen years earlier. Only one word at the bottom of the print was visible. It read: Roswell.

The third of the trio, John Fitzgerald Byers, prudently adjusted his brown tie, which matched his old brown business suit. He stroked his goatee pensively and walked over to one of the wall shelves, where an old battered dot-matrix printer had suddenly come to life. He picked a printed page and carried it over to Scully.

"The unique product number on the bar code of this item," Byers explained, leaning his head educationally towards Scully, "reveals the year the item was produced and the company that produced it. This sneaker was made last year, here, in Harrisburg, by a local shoe factory called The Walkassines".

Scully watched perplexed as Langly pulled out a laptop from the bottom of the flimsy cart. His fingers danced on the keyboard.

"Credit card hacking… check," he said. "Zooming in on year and month… check. Here it is guys."

The five of them gathered around his laptop. "Holy carbonates!" Mulder exclaimed. "She was not kidding about the Coke!"

Scully didn't know whether to be amused or concerned. "OK, can someone fill me in please?" she demanded.

Mulder pointed at the screen. "We have the history of the credit card expenses of one Anthony Terrence Crane, starting from July last year. Here," he said, "is Tony's purchase of one pair of sneakers for $39.95. Before and around that purchase, Tony apparently bought a lot of bubble gum. Starting about a month after the purchase, his bubble gum spending seemed to decline and was replaced by increased spending on Coca Cola."

Scully stared at the screen. "That does seem excessive," she admitted. "How much is that? Thirty cans a day?"

"Twenty-eight-point-three," said Langly. Scully eyed him suspiciously.

"So, what are we looking for then? Someone who would trade him coke for… Coke?" she asked.

Mulder shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Langly, can we hack into the sales records of the store?"

"Mulder, we can't…" started Scully, but Langly didn't appear to be listening.

"Hacking into the store records," he announced despite Scully's attempt to object. His fingers on the keyboard were a blur of speed.

"Check!" he said triumphantly in a few seconds. He looked very satisfied with himself.

"So, what _are_ we looking for?" asked Frohike, siding with Scully.

"Another purchase of the same type of sneakers," said Mulder.

"Here it is," pointed Langly. "A month and a half later. Sold to one Daniel McNiff."


	6. Chapter 6 - New Lead

"They are good at what they do, I'll give you that," said Scully back in the car half an hour later as they merged onto I-83 again. She never ceased to be amazed by the combination of the Lone Gunmen's out-of-place, nerdy looks, choice of random living locations, unique clothing choices, and extraordinary talents. Still, the three conspiracy theorists gave her the creeps. "You do realize that what they did was illegal, right?"

Mulder waved her off. "It's information we could have looked up back at the FBI," he said. "Maybe," he added. "If either of us had the patience to wait long enough to cut through the red tape."

Scully knew it was pointless to argue. She had worked with Mulder for years. Sticking to protocol was not his modus operandi. But she couldn't help feeling exasperated - and confused.

"Mulder, is there any particular reason why we are still investigating this case?" she asked.

"I don't think we've solved it yet," said Mulder. "You met Mrs. Crane, Scully. You heard her story. She and Tony had a very much normal life, as normal as anyone would have in their position. Until the boy bought his special sneakers. From that point on, something, somewhere, went terribly wrong, and the sneakers were at the center of it."

"I examined his sneakers, Mulder. They were just a pair of old sneakers, almost completely worn out."

"And soaked in blood with high percentage of cocaine," challenged Mulder.

"Which is also what you would expect under the circumstances," defended Scully. "The kid had been taking the drug by injecting the bottom of his feet."

"In your experience, how many cases have you known of drug abusers who chose this method of delivery?"

"So, the kid was creative in trying to hide his habit. So what?"

Mulder smiled. "You know you've been working on the X-files too long when you consider this _normal_ ," he said.

Scully sighed. When Mulder had set his mind to keep digging into a case, there was little she could say to convince him otherwise. The truth was, more often than not he happened to be right. He had the uncanny ability to sense the unusual, and a dogged determination to pursue it. Resigned, she took out Langly's printout. "OK, let's do it then," she said.

"Daniel McNiff," she read aloud. "Age 18, Gilmore High. Orphan. Foster parents, but he is not close to them. Lives alone. Works at the Tasty Burger. Seems to be making ends meet, barely, but he is doing it on his own."

"A very different league from Tony," observed Mulder.

"But he is an athlete too," noted Scully as she read the printout. "A runner. Both sprint and long distance."

"Is he any good?"

"Apparently, yes! _Recently noticed sports prodigy_ ," she quoted. " _Astounding potential. Rising star._ This kid is starting to get attention from coaches at the national level."

Mulder was nodding slowly as he listened. "His story is beginning to sound very much like Tony's," he said.

Scully looked at him. "OK, I agree. There do seem to be similarities. Still, Mulder, this kid just happened to buy the same brand of sneakers as Tony. There's nothing unusual about that, or even coincidental. He is an athlete. Athletes buy sneakers."

"$39.95," said Mulder pensively.

"Exactly. A cheap pair of sneakers for a poor teenage athlete who barely makes ends meet."

"Identical to a pair of sneakers a very well-off kid bought and kept as his best pair of sneakers ever, before he died under utterly unexplainable circumstances," said Mulder.

"Aaargh!" Scully leaned back on the car seat, exasperated. "All this kid did was buy a pair of sneakers. And just because of that, he'll have the FBI knocking on his door."


	7. Chapter 7 - Daniel McNiff

It was mid afternoon when Mulder worked the brass knocker on Daniel's door while Scully inspected the peeling facade of the shabby wooden house. Patches of scaly paint seemed to suggest that the house had been white long time ago. A small piece of picket fence rotted lying horizontally on the yellow grass in the small lawn in front. The rest of the fence, it there had been any, was missing.

The door opened, and a tall, skinny teenager dressed in jeans and a T-shirt emerged from the dim room behind, blinking in the light.

"Dan McNiff?" asked Mulder.

The teenager nodded. The two agents flashed their badges at him.

"FBI," said Mulder. "Special Agents Mulder and Scully."

Dan took it in stride. "I didn't do it," he said.

"We are not saying you did," said Mulder, flashing an _I like this kid_ smile at Scully.

With an understanding nod of his head, Dan turned around and headed back into the house. Mulder and Scully following suit.

Dan's living room reflected the overall disrepair of the rest of the premises, but was otherwise tidy. Its walls were covered in faded yellow paper. The beige carpet was worn out, but its surface, infused with dust collected over many years, appeared to at least be regularly vacuumed, probably with the old vacuum that stood guard in one of the corners.

A tan-colored, caved-in couch was the most prominent piece of furniture. It lay in the dead center of the room. A chair next to it doubled as a kitchen table. It held an empty paper bag with the logo of the Tasty Burger, and a napkin, on top of which sat the skeletal remains of two dozen fried chicken wings. Several empty Coke cans were stacked in a tower next to the couch.

"Sorry for the mess," muttered Dan. He collected the remaining scraps of his lunch and disposed of them in a trash bin next to his couch. He opened his hands, showing them the room. "This is it," he said. "My whole life. Feel free to poke around, whatever you are looking for."

"We are not exactly looking for anything," said Mulder. "We are here to talk to you about these," he pointed at Dan's sneakers. They were unmistakable. Old, gray, and falling apart, they looked exactly like Tony's.

In an instance, Dan's composure crumbled. He collapsed on the couch and let out a deep sigh.

"OK, what do you need to know," he asked.

"Do you know a kid called Anthony Terrence Crane?" asked Mulder. "Two years younger than you. Basketball player."

"Never heard of him."

"Last summer, he bought a pair of sneakers just like yours. He wore them all the time. Didn't take them off at all," said Mulder. He was watching Dan closely.

Dan nodded, more to himself than to them. "You know, that's actually a relief," he said. "I thought I was going crazy."

"What do you mean?" asked Scully with a break in her voice. Mulder knew that inflection well. This was the tone of her admitting that there was more to the case than met the eye.

"Like he said," Dan pointed at Mulder. "I never take them off. Every time I try, I am terrified. I can't do it."

Scully cast a surprised glance at Mulder. Mulder returned an _I told you_ victorious look.

"Dan, I am going to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me," said Scully. Dan nodded.

"Do you do drugs?" Scully asked.

Dan appeared to be entertained by the question. His mouth twisted into a smile. "Let me think about this one," he mused. "How about 'no'?"

"Would you be willing to undergo a test?" challenged Scully.

"Suit yourselves," he shrugged.

Mulder was looking squarely at him. "Dan, we are not here to bust you," he explained. "A kid about your age died today. His name was Tony. He wore the same sneakers as you, and also had a problem taking them off. We are here to make sure that nothing happens to you."

"I don't get it," said Dan. "Why would anything happen to me? What do drugs have anything to do with my sneakers?"

"If I have to be honest, nothing that we can surmise," confessed Scully. "However, a teen with an identical - let's call it 'condition' - died under suspicious circumstances earlier today. We are just doing due diligence in case there is a connection."

"How did he die?"

"He had his sneakers taken off," interjected in Mulder.

"Well, that's not exactly right," jumped in Scully, shooting a _why-are-you-telling-him-that_ look at Mulder. " _No one_ dies of having their sneakers taken off. The cause of death was an overdose of cocaine."

Dan looked at them, confused, but there was unhidden hope in his voice. "Well, in that case I don't have to worry, right? I don't do drugs. I am an athlete."

"A runner," helped Mulder.

Dan closed his eyes. "Why do you people even bother asking me questions?" he said. "You already know everything about me."

Mulder was watching him closely. "About your running," he said, "When exactly did you start winning?"

Dan opened his eyes. There was fear in them.

"Looks like you know more than even I suspected up to until very recently," he said. "I only realized this last week."

"Realized what?" asked Scully.

"I started to win shortly after I started wearing these..." He pointed down at his sneakers. His body had started to shake.

Scully shot a quick glance at Mulder and quickly sat on the broken sofa next to Dan. "You will be ok," she said, placing her hand over his. "We are here to help you."

Dan nodded, breathing with short, irregular gasps. "So, what do I do next?" he asked.

"We should take you to a hospital," said Scully. "Your addiction to your sneakers needs to be treated."

"My addiction is psychological," he argued. "I should be able to take off these sneakers anytime. So what if it scares me some? That's the most that can happen, right?"

Scully looked at Mulder, who was staring at them somberly from the middle of the room, hands crossed over his chest. He was probably considering the alternatives, weighing his curiosity against the unpredictable risk.

Scully did not want to consider alternatives. Her main concern was Dan's wellbeing.

"You should take these off in an environment where you are safe," she said pre-emptively.

"How much safer can I get than having two FBI Agents next to me?" asked Dan. "This crazy obsession has been scaring the hell out of me. Until you brought it up, I've never told anyone. You seem to know a lot about this. You can help me if I need help, right?" He looked at Mulder, who was staring at him silently, and at Scully, who sat next to him, her face creased in expression of deep concern.

Dan took their silence as a green light. "Let's get it over with!" he said.

"I would advice against…" started Scully. But Dan was already bent down, untying the laces of his right sneaker.

His shook violently. Large drops of sweat were falling on the floor from his forehead. With fierce determination he yanked out his sneaker.

Blood spurted from the bottom of his right foot. He screamed. With a jump forward, he pushed Mulder, who flew backwards and broke the closet door behind him, landing in the closet. Hundreds of Coca Cola cans collapsed on top of him from a carefully balanced arrangement inside.

Dan sprinted out the door. Scully ran after him, shouting for him to stop.

Mulder struggled to get out of the sea of cans. Once free, he started after Dan and Scully, but stopped suddenly, changing his mind before he was out the door. He turned around and walked over to the abandoned sneaker instead.

It was a worn-out gray sneaker almost identical to Tony's. Mulder peeked inside. The insole was soaked with blood and was falling apart, but there was also something else protruding slightly from the inner front part. Mulder took out a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and reached into the sneaker, carefully extracting a prickly small object. The object was the size of a golf ball and resembled a piece of thick barbed wire that had been rolled into a ball. It was mostly hollow, which would make it easy for it to flatten and spread inside of the sneaker if someone stepped on it, but the sharp spikes would almost certainly pierce the foot and inflict pain on anyone who tried to do that.

Holding the object carefully with his thumb and forefinger, Mulder walked over to the closet full of empty Coke cans, looking for a container to store it in. He found an empty glass jar with a twist-off top and placed the object inside, securing the lid. Then, leaving the jar on the floor next to Dan's caved-in couch, he ran out, looking for Dan and Scully.


	8. Chapter 8 - Impossible Escape

The trail of intermittent prints from Dan's bloody foot was easy to follow along the pavement. Mulder didn't have to run far before he found Scully a block away, standing with her hands on her hips and staring up at a four-story apartment building.

"He's in there," she said, pointing out a scarlet stain at the entrance.

"Only one way in?" asked Mulder.

"Yup. It's an old building. It's got a rusty fire escape in the back, but we'll hear him if he tries to use it."

"OK, I'm going in," said Mulder.

"And I'll stay here to make sure he doesn't double-back," said Scully.

The patio, covered in sticky green linoleum, led to a staircase with solid wooden handrails, which spiraled upwards in square loops. Mulder worked his way up the stairs following the blood trail.

On the fourth and last floor, the blood prints led to a closet, the door of which was half ajar. Mulder peeked cautiously inside. The closet was empty, save for a mop in a plastic bucket and two brooms. A metal ladder bolted to one of the walls had a splotch of blood on one of its rungs. The ladder ascended to an open hatch in the ceiling, which showed a patch of blue sky above. Mulder climbed up and peeked through the hatch.

Dan was pacing back and forth like a trapped animal on the gravel-covered flat roof. He no longer appeared to be the determined, strong-minded teenager they had spoken to only minutes earlier. His eyes shone with maddening glare. There was edgy, psychotic anxiety to his repetitive back-and-forth pacing.

"Dan, we can help you..." started Mulder. But he could not finish his sentence. With a scream, Dan ran towards the edge of the building, and with a fantastic jump he crossed the empty space above the back yard of the house, landing on the roof of the building on the other side. He ran towards a hatch identical to the one Mulder had emerged from, grabbed the lid, swung it open with astounding strength, and disappeared inside the building.

Mulder ran to the edge from which Dan had jumped, looking four stories down at the back yard and then back up and across to the other building. He judged the distance to be at least forty feet. He ran to the other side of the roof, below which, down on the street, Scully guarded the only entrance.

"He jumped on the next building, Scully!" he shouted down at her, pointing the direction.

Scully sprinted in the direction Mulder was pointing to, while he ran back down the stairs.

They almost collided around the corner. "Why are you running _back_!?" Mulder exclaimed.

"The two buildings are forty feet apart Mulder. He couldn't have jumped. He must still be in there."

She ran past Mulder and back into the first building.

Mulder sighed and shook his head. "But - he jumped..." he muttered to himself, raising his hands in exasperation. Then he settled to wait for Scully to come back out.

She looked somewhat sheepish when she returned several minutes later.

"I don't know what to say," she said. "There are blood prints leading towards the edge of the roof."

"And you will find the same blood prints on the next building over," said Mulder.

"How? That's building's at least 40 feet away!"

"I don't know. But I saw him jump across."

The two followed the overgrown path around the house to the small back yard behind. A tall wire fence ran along the edge of it and separated it from the back yard of building on which Dan had jumped. A gate made of the same wire as the fence was barely visible behind two large overflowing garbage cans. Mulder pushed one of the cans to the side to find out that the gate was locked with a large, industry-strength metal lock.

He looked up at the rust-covered fire escape that hung high above them.

"In case of fire, everyone in this building is screwed," he said, rattling the lock.

The two agents ran around the block to get to the entrance of the building on the other side, which was a mirror image of the first, but facing a smaller street with crumbling, broken pavement. A blood print at the entrance indicated that Dan had already left the building. Across the street was the onset of a wooded area. The bloody trail disappeared there.

"Maybe we should request a police dog," mused Scully pensively, but Mulder shook his head.

"The kid's a runner. He will be miles from here in no time."

They walked back towards Dan's abandoned apartment in silence. Scully spoke first as they were walking in.

"I am sorry for double-guessing you, Mulder. It wasn't even intentional. I just don't believe in the impossible as readily as you do."

"I know," he said. "I only hope that a day will come when you would trust me more."

She didn't answer, although deep inside, part of her protested his judgment. _I trust you with my life Mulder_ , she thought.

Back in Dan's abandoned apartment, Mulder stared at an empty jar. "I put it in here," he said. "I swear."

"What did it look like?"

"Like a small ball of rolled barbed wire," he explained, touching his middle finger to his thumb to show Scully the size of the object he had found in Dan's sneaker. "It had sharp spikes. It must have been painful to keep inside Dan's shoe."

"You think he came back here and took it?"

Mulder shook his head. "I don't think so. He took off in the opposite direction."

Scully looked around the room. "No new blood on the floor," she said, "And the sneaker itself is still here. I think you are right. He didn't come back."

She took the jar. "I'll take it to the lab. Worth running some tests."

Mulder looked at the collection of Coke cans scattered on the floor. "Coca Cola," he said. "Just like Tony."

Scully nodded. "I take my words back, Mulder. You were right. There _is_ more to investigate in this case."


	9. Chapter 9 - Lony Roshtoff

Mr. Lony Roshtoff, the owner of The Walkassines shoe factory, looked judgingly at Mulder and Scully's badges over his half-moon glasses. He wore blue overalls covered with multiple black stains and a long leather apron that shielded his large chest and belly. His sleeves were rolled up, showing his muscular hairy arms and rough stained hands. Seated in his tiny workshop, behind a low cobbler's bench laden with tools, tubes of glue, and scraps of leather, he resembled a stereotypical cobbler from a fairy tale.

"Factory's back there," he pointed behind him. "We're a small operation. But we do well locally."

He examined the old sneaker handed to him by Mulder.

"I remember these," he said. "We made two pilot pairs last summer. We had to discontinue the model. Glue didn't meet industry standards ."

He turned around on his short stool, moved a large sewing machine out of his way, and busied himself with the contents of three cardboard boxes that had been stored behind it. When he turned back towards the agents, he was holding a handwritten order form.

"Here it is," he said. "Our regular glue suppliers from Guatemala had just gone out of business. Unexpectedly," he added. "Landslide buried their workshop during a storm. They were a small family-run business. Members of some Indian tribe, offshoot from the Guatemalan Incas. U.S. Government lab in Chula Vista, California bought their remaining material."

He squinted at the order form, trying to decipher the squiggly handwriting.

"Altova," he said. "Altova Labs. Anyway, they bought the leftover Guatemalan materials and made their own glue. Experimental, they said. Gave it to us for free. We took it, of course, and used it. Helped us make the pilot model real cheap. But - quality did not pass inspection. Government tested. Didn't approve. You'd think they'd approve their own products."

He opened his arms. "That's all I've got for you."

Mulder and Scully thanked him for his time.


	10. Chapter 10 - A Working Theory

Back in his small windowless office in the basement the FBI, Mulder had just finished sending an APB for Dan. He leaned back in his chair, threw his feet on the heavy wooden desk which occupied most of the tiny space, and looked up at the ceiling covered in white tiles from which protruded a dozen or so yellow pencils. Sharpening pencils and tossing them up at the ceiling was another one of Mulder's peculiar hobbies that helped him concentrate when he thought about a case. When he was successful, the pencils stuck in the soft spongy texture of the tiles. They hung there until a cleaning crew would notice them and remove them. This happened rarely. Hardly anyone, cleaning crews included, ever came into Mulder's office, which he himself joked was intended for the "FBI's most unwanted."

Scully found him contemplating the stuck pencils when she walked in.

"Got the lab results," she said, pushing Mulder's feet off the desk and placing a transparent plastic bag with the jar from Dan's apartment on it instead. She handed Mulder the familiar green folder, which, Mulder knew, contained the analysis of Dan's blood, and sat down across from him on the other side of the desk on the only other chair available, which was a small, foldable one. Mulder opened the folder and read aloud.

"Sugars. Trace amounts of an unknown organic material. Cocaine... Cocaine again?" he looked at Scully, eyebrows raised.

Scully nodded. "Yup. He lied to us, Mulder. He was also doing cocaine, just like Tony. He had less of it than Tony did in his blood, but enough to be aberrantly high."

Mulder put down the report. "Maybe that explains why he was actually able to take off one of his sneakers before he turned mad," he said. "He must have been less drugged than Tony."

"But it doesn't explain his behavior," said Scully. "Mulder, we talked to this kid. Did he strike you as someone who was lying? Or someone who was high?"

Mulder raised his index finger and pointed it at Scully.

"Now you are catching on," he said. "Exactly the point I was trying to make about Tony. Mrs. Crane, who knew her son well, could not believe Tony was under the influence. Nothing gave it away. Both kids, though they presumably never met, were excellent liars, and were able to hide their drug use well."

"It's almost as if..." Scully was staring at Mulder in thought.

Mulder finished her sentence. "Yup. It's almost as if the kids themselves _didn't know_."

Scully appeared surprised by his conclusion. "But how could they not know?" she asked. "How can one not know they are injecting themselves with cocaine?"

Mulder shrugged. "You are the medical expert, you tell me," he said.

"What about the object you said you found in Dan's shoe?" asked Scully.

"It looked like a piece of barbed wire that had been rolled into a small ball," reprised Mulder.

Scully paused. "I wonder..." she said, trying to formulate her thoughts, "I wonder if the kids didn't actually inject themselves _consciously_? What if, instead, they _absorbed_ the cocaine _passively_ through wounds on their feet?"

Mulder nodded, his eyes shining with avid interest, but said nothing. He knew his partner. She was a scientist, and currently, she was in familiar waters, working with the data they had, and formulating a hypothesis that attempted to explain the facts. When the wheels of her brain started turning, it was best to let them turn until she uncovered the scientific truth behind the complex phenomena they often investigated.

"It's starting to make sense," continued Scully. "Both kids had wounds on the bottom of their feet. Dan kept a sharp object in his sneaker, constantly opening up new wounds which would allow for faster absorption of any substance he placed in that sneaker."

She was on a roll, following her own reasoning aloud.

"Let's say that someone put cocaine in the boys' sneakers. Initially, the cocaine would have absorbed into their bloodstream through the skin, slowly. Later, as the kids played sports actively, tiny wounds would appear on the bottom of their feet from the rough action, facilitating absorption. With time, the kids would find out that the more their feet hurt, the better they performed in sports, and the higher they felt. Maybe then, as in Dan's case, both kids started to inflict additional damage to their feet to get more of the good feeling. Reaction through association. We are back to Pavlov again. The kids get addicted to cocaine without even knowing they are taking it. Consciously, they are attributing the way they feel to their sneakers. Hence their perceived addiction to the _sneakers_ , and hence their fear of taking them off!"

Mulder smiled triumphantly. "That's the Scully I've been waiting for!" he said.

"We are still looking at a possible crime," she continued, disregarding his overt admiration. "Someone who could have had access to the sneakers of both boys."

"Mr. Roshtoff?" suggested Mulder, capitalizing on her momentum. "Or, the Government lab that synthesized the new experimental glue with materials from Guatemala? Altova Labs?"

Scully shook her head. "No. Mr. Roshtoff sold them the sneakers, but he didn't have the access to keep restocking the supply of cocaine after that. Same is true for the lab, even assuming the cocaine was somehow in the glue produced there. In either case, there couldn't have been enough cocaine in the sneakers initially to last them a long time. The kids must have somehow been exposed to a _renewable_ source of cocaine. Amounts like the ones found in their blood require prolonged exposure for months. No, it must have been someone who knew both boys, and who had day-to-day contact with both."

Mulder nodded again. "Right," he said. "So, maybe you, too, were right earlier on. Maybe it is good old meticulous police work from this point on to find who was responsible."

"Maybe," said Scully.

She sat back in the small foldable chair. Unanticipated moisture filled her clear, green eyes.

"Mulder, can you imagine how much it must have hurt?" she said. "Just like Mrs. Crane said, at every step."

Mulder watched her with unhidden admiration. Strong, analytical, and at the same time compassionate and sensitive. He couldn't wish for more in a partner.

Scully caught his eye and eyed back a silent question. _Why are you looking at me like this?_ He shook his head with a shy smile. _No reason._

She shrugged, got up, and picked up the jar from the desk with sudden determination.

"We have to find Dan," she said firmly. "If someone did this to these kids, he or she may have a great interest in finding Dan before we do."


	11. Chapter 11 - Possible Destination

The first response to Mulder's APB arrived at nine in the morning on the next day. Sitting at the large desk in the basement of his FBI office, Mulder listened to the heavy brogue on the other side of the line.

"Suhgeant Glogg, Suh, responding to yoh Ei-Pee-Bee. Puhleese Depaahtment Johnstown, Pennsihlvania. Yoh suspect was at a cuhnvenience stoh 'round 8 last night..."

Mulder wrote down the details.

The second call came shortly before noon. The new voice was clear and articulate.

"Agent Mulder? Lieutenant James Ryley speaking. SOPD. Yellow Springs, Ohio. There was a sighting for your suspect this morning, at 5 am, at a Store 24 on North Fairfield Road... May I ask what interest the FBI has with this individual?"

Mulder thanked him for the information.

Leaning back in his chair, laptop on his lap, he opened _Google Maps, Blue Edition_ , designed for and used exclusively by the FBI. He entered the two locations and busied himself with the application.

Scully interrupted his concentration when she came in half an hour later. She had changed into black pants and dark blue turtleneck, and her copper-colored hair had acquired a slight curl.

"Looks like someone didn't shower," she said, pointing at Mulder's wrinkled suit that was clearly the same one he had worn the day before. Mulder reached for the printout she handed to him, ignoring her remark.

"I generated lists of people the two kids might have known," Scully explained as Mulder leafed through the printout. "Then, I cross-referenced them. Guess what? I couldn't find a _single_ person who might have known both kids at the same time. Not one! I especially double-checked the people who the two boys had daily contact with. Hard to believe, actually. Harrisburg Pennsylvania isn't that big of a place."

Mulder handed the printout back to her.

"I know," he said. "Langly hacked into their Facebook accounts earlier and didn't find any common friends either. They weren't exactly the same _class_."

Scully gave him an annoyed look intended to say _you could have told me you had that info earlier_ and _you know hacking is illegal_. Mulder looked back at her, opening his hands in an innocent gesture; _you know me, I'm just doing my job_.

Aloud, Scully said: "Good. At least I didn't miss anything."

She pulled up the folding chair, the only chair she ever had for her disposal in Mulder's office, and sat across from Mulder, who had gone back to fiddling with his laptop.

"There is another possibility, actually," she said. "Maybe no one put the cocaine in the boys' sneakers. Maybe they put it in themselves, _not knowing_ it was cocaine. Athletes use talc or various other powders, against slipping or sweat or foot odor."

Mulder raised his glance from his laptop.

"Good thinking," he pointed out. "Irrespective, this still means someone must have provided the substance to only these two boys, or left it in a place where only they and no one else had access. Everything still points to a common source, whether it's a person or a location."

Scully nodded. Then her face lit up.

 _"Coca Cola!"_ she said in a sudden realization.

"You know what I like!" smiled Mulder. Then he gave her a playful nod. "Vending machine's right outside."

Scully ignored his joke. "No, Mulder, listen, this is starting to make sense! Tony bought lots of Coke. So did Dan. This doesn't necessarily mean either of them _drank_ it. Coca Cola was originally derived from the Coca plant. Later, they started to produce the drink using technology that is a closely guarded secret. Still, an ingredient from the original coca plant continues to be used nowadays. They call it the _a-ha_ ingredient. Presumably it no longer has any addictive properties. But the truth is, no one really knows what it is. The Coca Cola patent protects its secret, so the formula cannot be duplicated. Still, effectively, down to a chemical level, Coca Cola is composed of the same ingredients that make up cocaine."

Mulder wrinkled his forehead in confusion. "If you could make cocaine from Coke, why all the trouble of smuggling it illegally?" he asked.

"That's the thing," said Scully. "It's not that simple. There is hydrogen and oxygen in the air, but you can't just make water from them. It takes a chemical process to bind the two together."

"I thought making water from hydrogen and oxygen was a trivial exercise for a chemist," said Mulder.

"In the water example, yes, " said Scully. "But water only has three atoms in its molecule, and the process is relatively simple and well known. Processes for making complex organic substances are not. Theoretically, it's possible to turn Coke into cocaine. In practice, no one knows how."

"What you are saying," said Mulder, choosing his words carefully, "is that the kids may have discovered a way to synthesize coke from... Coke?"

"Maybe," said Scully. "Or maybe someone else did, and they were just the guinea pigs for it."

Mulder nodded slowly.

"Like Altova Labs in Chula Vista, California..." he finished her thought.

"Which brings me to my next point," said Scully. "I looked up Altova. Or, to be more exact, I tried to look them up. They are not listed in FBI's database as an existing legal entity. They have a website with basically only their logo. They have no listed address or contact number."

Mulder gave out a deep sigh.

"We've seen this before," he said gravely, "and we both know what it means."

"Yup," confirmed Scully. "Classified Government work."

Mulder turned his laptop towards Scully and pointed to his open _Google Maps_ application _._

"Earlier this morning," he said, "I received two responses to our APB. One was from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and the other was from Yellow Springs, Ohio. They both reported the sighting of a white male in his teens, wearing only one sneaker on his left foot. In both locations, he picked up a couple of bottles of Coke from small local stores, and ran off without paying. In Yellow Springs, there was a cop in the store. He ran after the boy, but couldn't keep up. The cop was apparently in great shape. Still, the kid ran faster than anyone he had ever seen."

"OK, clearly that was Dan," agreed Scully. "So, we at least know which way he went."

"And maybe where he is going," said Mulder. He pointed at the screen of his laptop. "Dan was here, in Harrisburg, at 3 pm yesterday. Around 8 pm, he was in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Around 5 am this morning, he was in Yellow Springs, Ohio."

Mulder had the software draw a line through the three locations. "It appears," he said, "that Dan is traveling West, along what looks like an exactly straight line. According to eyewitnesses, he is traveling on foot. If he continues along the same trajectory with the same speed, right now he would be around here."

He had _Google Maps_ compute Dan's estimated location. The resulting map showed a blinking red dot near Altamont, Illinois.

Scully considered the numbers displayed in a table at the top of the map. "This can't be right," she said. "His estimated average velocity is a little less than 30 miles per hour. At this speed, he can't be traveling on foot."

"He is not traveling with a vehicle," said Mulder. "He doesn't have one. Also, with a vehicle, he would average at least 50-60 miles per hour, not 30. Besides, with a vehicle, he would need to stick to the roads, not travel in a straight line, which is exactly what he seems to be doing. Finally, the two eyewitnesses both confirmed that he _ran_. He is a runner, Scully. That's his _style_."

"Well, let's think realistically," Scully argued back. "The world record for sprinting is a little over 23 miles per hour for a 100 meter sprint. For long distance, the top marathon runners are averaging around 12 miles per hour at best."

"I don't know what to tell you, Scully. Facts are facts. Both he and Tony displayed unprecedented physical strength. I saw Dan jump 40 feet between two buildings whether you believe it or not. The kid was taking cocaine. That's why doping is illegal in sports."

"That's not what cocaine typically does to people," said Scully. "Cocaine addicts are feeble and mellow. The drug destroys their brains and atrophies their bodies."

"That's also not _how_ people take cocaine," pointed out Mulder. "I don't know of any drug addict who absorbs his drugs through wounds on the bottom of his feet. This is not a drug abuse investigation. It's an X-file."

Scully looked at the map. "So, where is he heading?"

"I was coming to that," said Mulder. He had _Google Maps_ extrapolate Dan's trajectory further West. Right before it hit the Pacific Ocean, the line passed though Chula Vista, California.

"The non-existent Altova?" said Scully, raising her eyebrows in surprise.

"Care to join me for a trip?" asked Mulder, getting up from his desk.


	12. Chapter 12 - La Cocachina

Springer, New Mexico, Route US-412 E, 5:30 PM.

The FBI-rented Ford Focus slid indolently along the wide open New Mexico road stretching from horizon to horizon. Yellow fields of dry grass outlined the road on both sides. The landscape was flat and featureless, save for occasional wooden barriers blocking dirt roads that diverged perpendicularly from the main road and disappeared into the desert beyond. The blue sky above was streaked by a thin veil of white cirrus clouds.

In the passenger seat, clean-shaven and dressed in a newly pressed black suit, Mulder moved his finger along his iPad while Scully drove. His screen displayed a map on which a straight red line from the East was advancing slowly to the West. Another line, this one green, was approaching from the West and converging steadily on the first one. Mulder looked at his watch.

"We will intercept Dan's trajectory in about an hour," he said.

A police radio, placed on the Ford's dashboard and tuned in to the local police frequencies, gave out occasional one-sentence notifies. Status checks were green, shift changes had no transition notes, no one had been caught speeding.

"Quiet area," observed Scully. Wearing a black blazer with matching black pants which allowed for better mobility in case action involving suspects got physical, she kept her eyes on the road.

"Maybe that's why _they_ decided to crash here," said Mulder mischievously.

Scully smiled. Chasing evidence of extraterrestrial life was Mulder's life-long quest. It was only appropriate that he would naturally weave such a comment into any conversation that took place in New Mexico, the mecca of UFO conspiracy theorists. Still, he was neither a fool, nor a blind believer. He took the necessary scientific rigor to confirm or refute his conclusions. And he did so with a generous doze of self-criticality and humor. Scully enjoyed and appreciated that side of him.

"My understanding is that they didn't exactly _decide_ where to crash," she joked back. "The term _crash_ implies lack of choice."

"Right as always," said Mulder. "Still, now that we are here, what would you say to a little detour once this case is over?"

"Are you serious?"

"Why not, we are so close by."

Scully laughed. "Roswell's a four-hour drive from here," she said. "Besides, haven't you been there enough times already?"

Mulder sat back in his seat, hands behind his head.

"We can call it vacation," he mused. "Take time off. Enjoy a refreshing walk in the desert."

"You've taken too many walks in this desert, Mulder," said Scully. "They probably have your face on a 'Wanted' poster there."

"Come on, Scully," he pleaded. "We can't come so close to Roswell and not take another look!"

"OK, calm down," she concurred, amused. "When the case is over, we can talk it over."

Mulder glanced up as the lonely shape of a water turbine passed by, breaking the monotony of the otherwise featureless yellow fields on the side of the road.

"I'll hold you up to that promise," he said. Then, he invested himself in research on his iPad.

Silence settled as they sat quietly, absorbed in their thoughts. Minutes flew by. Mulder's sudden, unexpected comment took Scully by surprise.

" _Cocassin!_ " he declared triumphantly.

"What?" Scully jumped, startled.

"We may be dealing with a Cocassin," explained Mulder, pointing to his iPad.

"What's a Cocassin?"

"According to Wikipedia," said Mulder and read aloud, " _Cocassin_ is the English translation of the Spanish _Cocachina_ , which, in turn, derives from the Incan word _Cocojinn_ used by the Guatemalan Incas to describe a _tree spirit_."

Scully raised her eyebrow in a skeptical grimace. "Tree spirit," she said.

Mulder continued to read. "A reference to this mythical creature was found in a letter written by Pascual Vazquez, one of the foot soldiers of Francisco Pizarro, the conquistador who, following the success of his distant cousin Fernando Cortes, had set out to conquer the Incas in South America.

Being of short stature and of weak character, Vazquez had been largely unhappy and unsuccessful both at home in Spain, and as a member of Pizarro's army. His luck changed in the year of 1527, when he and a small splinter group of Pizarro's men left the lands that comprise modern day Peru, and headed North to Central America.

Vazquez reached the Incan lands of nowaday Guatemala, and returned a changed man. He had acquired unprecedented strength, which earned him respect and admiration. He had a short but successful career as the governor of lands conquered by Pizarro."

"I'm not following," said Scully, confused.

Mulder continued to read: "Before he died of a sudden inexplicable illness, which turned him into a madman, Vazquez wrote a letter to a girl back in Spain who he had always admired and had hoped some day to marry. In his letter, he attributed his turnaround of fortune to _La Cocachina_ , a tree spirit that inhabited the Igapó forests of Guatemala, which granted him strength and prosperity. English translation of his letter translated the name of the spirit as _Cocassin_."

"Spirits and supernatural strength are common elements of folklore in many cultures," noted Scully.

"Maybe for a reason," said Mulder. "The Cocassin was both respected and feared by the Incas," he continued to read. "That's because it was both a friend and an enemy. It emerged from the forest to help those who were weak in spirit. It pervaded their bodies and gave them superhuman abilities. But, it didn't give without taking away. Its price was to enchain their souls."

Scully smiled, both impressed and amused. This was Mulder thinking outside the box. He had the uncanny ability to piece together fragments of ancient myths to explain otherwise unexplainable observations. Scully's role had always been to question his leaps of logic and ensure scientific rigor in his conclusions. She slipped right back into it.

"Let me get this straight," she said. "You are suggesting that Tony and Dan were _haunted_ by a _mythical tree spirit_."

"It fits what we know so far," shrugged Mulder. "Cocassins help those who are weak in spirit. Both Tony and Dan needed such help. Tony had recently lost his father. Dan had a difficult life from the get-go: an orphan, working to support himself and trying to graduate from high school. But then, similarly to Vazquez, both boys had their lives turned around, which is what a Cocassin apparently does. Both started to excel in sports and became popular among their peers. Both seemed to have acquired exceptional strength. And finally, both boys lost control of their lives. They found themselves unable to free themselves from their savior, who was both a saint and a tyrant."

"And came in the shape of a size ten sneaker," interjected Scully.

"Or _with_ the sneaker!" corrected her Mulder.

Scully looked squarely at him. "Haunted shoes," she said flatly.

"Bear with me," said Mulder. "The glue for the sneakers came from Guatemala, and it was produced by a tribe of _Incas_. If anyone would know anything about Cocassins, that would be the Incas, right? The Cocassin - whatever shape or form spirits like this come as - could have come with the glue."

"And what about the cocaine in the blood of both of these boys?" asked Scully.

"The cocaine could be how the Cocassin controls his hosts - victims - for lack of a better word."

"Spirits don't typically have access to controlled substances," observed Scully.

"Maybe the Cocassin was able to produce it for them, or teach them how to make it," suggested Mulder. "Scientists may not know how to synthesize cocaine, but there may be _creatures_ that do. Bees know how to produce honey from nectar collected from petals. The Coca plant knows how to produce that special a-ha ingredient in Coke you were telling me about. Maybe Cocassins knows how to make cocaine from Coke."

Scully considered his reasoning.

"It's a nice story Mulder," she admitted. "You do have a talent for finding these."

"But you are not buying it."

"Not until I start believing in spirits," she said. "However, there is one great point that you've been trying to make all this time, and I kept missing it earlier. Whatever happened to these boys does seem to be related to these _and only these_ two pairs of sneakers they bought. If indeed someone was supplying the boys with cocaine, they did not have to do that to two kids who bought the _same_ unique one-of-a-kind type of sneakers. They could have picked any two kids with any kind of sneakers. You were right from the very beginning - there has to be something very unique about these sneakers. You may be right now too. It may very well be related to what happened to that Guatemalan glue when it was processed by that non-existent government lab in California where Dan seems to be heading."

Mulder tapped on the screen of his iPad. "Cocassin," he said with a sly smile. Scully laughed and shook her head.

The police radio on their dashboard suddenly came to life.

"Team four to base, team four to base, do you read me?"

"Reading you loud and clear team four."

"Heading to check out a disturbance at Sam's Goodies in Clayton. A kid's causing some kind of trouble. Owner has a baseball bat and isn't letting him out of the store."

Mulder pulled up the map on his iPad. The leading dot of Dan's trajectory, which had been on a collision course with theirs, had gotten very close. Both trajectories were converging at a spot at the edge of the town of Clayton, New Mexico.

Scully stepped on the accelerator, speeding up East on Route 412, while Mulder looked up Sam's Goodies on the GPS of his cell phone.


	13. Chapter 13 - Desert Chase

Sam's Goodies turned out to be medium-sized convenience store with a one-column gas pump on the side of Route 402 at the edge of Clayton. To the South and West of it lay a reddish-orange desert. In front of it, the two FBI agents encountered a small siege.

A police cruiser was parked at an angle two-hundred feet from the store. Two policemen stood behind the cruiser. One was using a loudspeaker to advise whoever was in to come out with their hands up. The other, shielded by the cruiser, was pointing a handgun at the store with both hands.

"You won't need this," said Mulder indicating the gun as he and Scully flashed their badges. The armed policeman ignored him and kept his gun pointed.

The loudspeaker policeman tried to caution them as they headed for the store.

"Are you sure, agents? The kid may be armed."

"He is not," assured him Mulder. He headed for the front door, while Scully circled around the building to cover the back.

The store appeared to be deserted. A faint radio somewhere behind the empty checkout counter played a screeching oldie tune that Mulder couldn't quite place. On other side of the counter, on the floor, Mulder encountered the body of an elderly gentleman, who lay peacefully on his side, his glasses at a lopsided angle on his nose. From his blue overalls and the baseball bat lying next to him, Mulder guessed that he was the store owner. He checked the man's pulse. The owner appeared to be alive, albeit unconscious. He appeared to have been tapped on the head just enough to knock him out, probably with his own bat.

Mulder advanced further into the store, checking carefully between rows of toilet paper and cleaning supplies. Motion towards the back of the room made him turn, but it was just Scully who had entered through the back door. She silently shook her head: _He isn't back there._

Everything happened fast. With a scream, Dan jumped out from behind a wall of cereal boxes. He pushed Scully out of his way, and she flew back, knocking over a shelf of canned foods.

"You ok?" shouted Mulder.

"Yes. Go!" shouted back Scully.

Mulder sprinted after Dan who ran out the front door.

"Don't shoot at the boy!" Mulder shouted at the policemen outside, who, following Mulder and Scully, appeared to have reluctantly left the cover of their cruiser and had made it a third of the way towards the entrance of Sam's Goodies.

Both policemen stood in Dan's way, the armed one still pointing his gun forward with both hands. Dan didn't slow down. He leaped. The armed policeman fired, but missed him. Dan flew over the two of them, who ducked slightly, even though the boy cleared them by at least three feet. He landed near their cruiser. With his bare hands, he ripped off the cruiser's mirror and stabbed the cruiser's tire with the broken handle. The tire made a hissing sound and the cruiser tilted to one side. The boy tossed the mirror and took off into the desert to the South-West.

"Don't shoot!" shouted Mulder again.

"I shot in the air," grunted the second policeman as Mulder ran past him.

"That's exactly where the boy was!" shouted back Mulder without stopping. He ran past the crippled cruiser, jumped into his rented Ford, and sped up after Dan, who was already a tiny dot in the distance halfway to the horizon.

It took Mulder a while to catch up with the boy. In the red and orange dust of the desert, Dan was running towards a crimson sunset at a breathtaking speed. Mulder rolled down his window.

"Dan, stop! I know what you need. Stop! I can help you!"

But Dan was not listening. He was running with an insane look in his eyes. Mulder glanced at his car's speedometer. It showed 34 miles per hour. _Screw the world record_ , he thought.

He tried to intercept Dan's path with his car. With ease, Dan jumped up, stepped on top of the Ford, and landed on the other side, continuing to run unhindered.

After a few attempts to block Dan, Mulder found himself at a loss. He could not stop the boy or trap him in any way. He could only drive behind or next to him. _What I need is a lasso_ , he thought. Not that he knew how to use one. He tried talking to Dan again.

"Dan, listen to me! There is something that has taken hold of you. I know how to get rid of it. Let me help you! Stop!"

Without warning, Dan collapsed on the ground. Mulder swerved and hit the brakes.

In the red dust of the desert, Dan lay motionless. Mulder ran to him and held his wrist. The boy had no pulse. Mulder turned him on his back, breathed air into his mouth, and started performing CPR. One, two, three, four, five... He checked Dan's pulse again. There was none.

He took out his cell phone.

"Scully! Dan just collapsed, probably from exhaustion. He has no pulse. He needs medical attention _now!_ I'm doing CPR, but it's not helping."

"They've dispatched another car," he heard Scully shout from the receiver. "This one needs a new tire. They are almost here. Actually, I see them! Where are you?"

Mulder transmitted his coordinates from the GPS app on his phone and jumped back into trying to resuscitate Dan.

He continued to perform CPR to no avail. After a while, he gave up and sat on the ground next to the the boy.

Sprawled in the orange dust in the desert, Dan looked frail and broken. His body appeared to have aged. He had shriveled and dried up like a mummy. His skin was stretched tight over his protruding cheekbones. His right foot was bare, and the bottom of it no longer had any skin. It was just a bloody slab of exposed flesh, on which the blood had started to congeal.

Gently, Mulder took off Dan's left sneaker. From it, he carefully removed the spiky barbed-wire object nested inside. It looked identical to the one he had found in Dan's other sneaker. Mulder inspected it. It would probably hurt a lot to have something so sharp in one's shoe, he thought. How would a person even come up with the idea to use a device like this? He turned the object in his hands.

And dropped it. The object had moved.

On the ground, it looked like a thorny plant. For a moment, it lay motionless. Then, very slowly, it untangled itself and started crawling toward Dan. Its goal was obvious - it was heading for Dan's bloody foot.

It reached the boy's foot, and stuck several of its thorns in it. After a few seconds, it pulled them out. What it was looking for was no longer there. Dan was no longer alive to provide nutritious blood to it.

The spiky creature made one more attempt for survival. It crawled to Dan's pocket from which protruded a small empty plastic bottle of Coke. It stuck a few thorns in the plastic, but found nothing there to feed on either. After that, it stopped moving.

It lay in the dust, motionless. Mulder watched it with fascination.

Suddenly, the creature started to visibly fall apart. It broke in half, and then into more and more pieces. Mulder picked it up as it disintegrated away. He quickly took off his own shoe, and placed the pieces inside. He put his shoe back on, expecting to feel pain as the thorns would undoubtedly prick his foot. But the thorns didn't hurt him. They seemed to have become brittle. Mulder felt them break to dust under his weight.

Scully arrived soon after. She ran out of the new police cruiser, carrying a medical kit with her, but Mulder shook his head: _It's too late_.

He no longer felt the spiky object inside his shoe. He took off his shoe and looked inside. There was nothing left in there except for a small amount of sticky residue.


	14. Chapter 14 - Dead Ends

The burgundy Audi A6 raced along US-285 South, a lone vehicle flying at 90 miles per hour in the early morning hour. It wasn't their typical car rental, but Scully had not argued much when the agent at Avis had suggested they should "relish a true driving experience". With an inner shrug, she had simply handed him her FBI-paid credit card. She had to admit he had been right. Presently at the wheel, dressed in blue jeans and a light green turtleneck, her hair tied in a pony tail, she was enjoying how the scenery zoomed by.

In the passenger seat, cellphone stuck to his ear, Mulder listened grimly to a voice on the other side of the line.

"Thank you," he said into the receiver. "Yes, I'd appreciate that very much."

A _spell_ sound came out of his cell phone as soon as he hung up. Mulder opened the attached image, which displayed a rundown industrial-looking brick building with an imploded roof and black graffiti on the walls. He held up his cell phone towards Scully.

"The last piece of the puzzle," he said.

Scully took her eyes off the road to look at the image.

"What am I looking at?" she asked before focusing on the road again.

"Altova Labs," said Mulder. "Or at least what resides at the registered address of Altova Labs. The building does not seem to be fit for rats."

"Altova is not there?"

"Altova is not anywhere," said Mulder. "Other than one static web page with no information on it, there is no sign that this lab ever existed. Officer Sanchez from the Chula Vista Police Department, who kindly sent me this photo, said he grew up in the area. This building has been condemned for as far back as he could remember."

Scully wrinkled her forehead. "So, how is that the last piece of the puzzle?" she asked.

"It's like the last piece of any puzzle we try to solve," said Mulder, putting his cell phone away. "Another dead end." He stared at the road ahead.

Scully let out a deep sigh. She understood and felt Mulder's frustration. He had dedicated his life to investigating the most unusual unsolved cases. What he got back was dead ends.

This case was no different. They had made some progress. Together, following Mulder's unparalleled intuition, and Scully's scientific conclusions, they had arrived at a strange, but at least plausible cause of death for their patient zero, Tony Crane. Thanks to Mulder's persistence, they had identified and tracked down another possible victim, Dan McNiff. They had done their best trying to save his life - but failed. At the bottom of it all, there seemed to be an unknown entity, the _Cocassin_ , a creature, likely a parasite, that attached itself to human hosts, fed on their blood, and injected cocaine in them, using its effects to control them. There was no actual proof of its existence other than Mulder's own claim to have seen it twice. Scully believed him, of course, but wished that there was more material evidence she could work with.

With many missing pieces already, one more key piece of the puzzle had fallen through. The Government Lab responsible for handling the materials of plant origin from Guatemala, which could have shed more light on their experimental glue processing technology, had proven untraceable, possibly even fictitious. Not that Scully expected to find out much from them, but the fact that a covert Government facility engaged in undisclosed experimental work may have been involved in the mysterious deaths of the two boys made Scully uncomfortable, even angry.

This was what work on the X-files was like: incomplete, inconclusive evidence; missing pivotal information; fragments of unbelievable, scientifically fringe facts linked by loosely fitting patters and leading to dead ends. Over the years, Scully had grown resigned to that reality of her work, and yet, she found herself irked by it every time, wishing she could dive in deeper and bring the case to a more logical, rigorous conclusion through sheer obstinate persistence. That's how Mulder operated. That's what pushed him to keep going as the years went by and the unresolved cases piled up. Despite her own frustration, Scully found herself admiring his dogged determination in the face of repeated failure.

She stepped on the accelerator and watched the speedometer climb to 100. Why not, she thought. It was a wide, open, empty highway, and there was no one else in sight.

She had gotten lost in her thoughts when Mulder tapped her on the shoulder.

"Slow down, our exit's coming up."

She raised her eyebrows in surprise but took her foot off the accelerator.

"The GPS says it's not for another fifteen miles," she argued.

"The GPS is misleading," said Mulder. "Intentionally," he added.

This brought a smile to Scully's face. If anyone knew where that exit was, that would be Mulder. It was not his first time driving along these New Mexico roads.

"There," he said, pointing to the right. "Careful. It's at an uncomfortable 120 degree angle to the right."

Scully hit the breaks and took the unexpected sharp turn onto a barely visible part of the shoulder where the grass seemed to be somewhat sparser and trampled. Only once the Audi was on that patch, Scully could see the dirt road spawning from it and heading into the desert.

"Why is this turn not on the GPS?" she felt compelled to ask as she carefully drove along, trying to avoid the potholes and boulders.

"GPS points to the _tourist_ location," clarified Mulder. "As you can imagine, the _real_ site is actually off limits to the public."

They navigated a series of turns following Mulder's guidance through progressively smaller, increasingly indiscernible dirt roads overgrown with vegetation. Finally, a few miles in, one of the roads dead-ended at a high electric fence with curling barbed wire on top. A large sign on it read "Restricted Access: Violators will be Prosecuted."

Scully pulled over. Mulder stepped out of the Audi and stood next to the fence. He peered through at the open field beyond. It was a barren, wasteland field, flat and empty, covered in low bushes and dried grass.

Scully watched him through the rolled-down window. That was his moment, a moment of reflection. He had spent the better part of his career looking for evidence of extraterrestrial life, and the Roswell crash site was, in many ways, ground zero. He had been there before, of course, but, like a kid at a playground, he came back time and again, seeking the feeling, enjoying the experience, living the moment.

She had agreed to join him on this short road trip before they flew back to Washington. She had considered it a whim, a caprice, part of Mulder's eccentric uniqueness. Watching his meditative, zen-like gaze, however, she realized that the bond he had with this place was more profound, personal. Mulder carried a passion in him, and it was that passion that connected him to his work and drove him forward.

A slight pang of jealousy played a melancholy chord in her. She worked on the X-files too, but her drive was different: professional ambition, scientific curiosity. For Mulder, the professional and personal merged.

It was several minutes before Mulder turned and looked at Scully.

"Ready to go back?" she asked.

"Not yet," he said softly. He held out his hand. "Come over and stand here with me for a moment."

She gave him a surprised look, but stepped out of the car and stood next to him, placing her hand in his. Together, they stared beyond the fence. The empty field was quiet, as if acknowledging that it wasn't going to share its secret.

A minute passed. A sense of calm descended over Scully. It was a feeling both comforting and liberating, a feeling of belonging. She felt her frustration and professional jealousy melting away. There may not always be answers, she thought, but Mulder was not alone in his quest. They were in it together. The X-files were as much hers as they were his.

At last, Mulder turned to face her. He looked into her green eyes and gave her a shy smile.

"OK," he said " _Now_ , I'm ready."


	15. Chapter 15 - Mulder's Report

A grandfather clock somewhere in the basement of the FBI headquarters in Washington DC struck midnight.

Sitting with the lights off in his office, his face lit by the neon blue of the screen of his laptop, Mulder was finishing his report.

 _The mysterious deaths of Anthony Terrence Crane and Daniel McNiff have been attributed to the fatal shock of withdrawal, when a constant source of cocaine, fed into the blood systems of these two teenagers, was taken away._

This much everyone agreed upon. This was the undisputed clinical cause of death.

 _Cocaine was fed into the victims' bloodstreams by a parasitic organism called Cocassin, which lived in their sneakers and was capable of synthesizing cocaine from ingredients found in the common drink Coca Cola._

Mulder could see Scully's focused face in his mind. "We have no _definitive_ proof of that," she would say. She would likely argue some of the details. Then, eventually, with a sigh, she would reluctantly agree to sign off on Mulder's explanation. "OK, I don't have better guesses either. At least what you are conjecturing here is theoretically possible, I'd give you that," she would say.

Mulder continued typing.

 _Despite all evidence collected, the Cocassin's existence is still unverified. There have been no other documented cases observed in modern times, and there are no listings of such a creature in any scientific taxonomy._

The rest, Scully would classify as "speculation". But for Mulder, it was important to share what he believed was the truth. He wanted to put down all of it on paper, so, if the events of this case ever happened again, someone would be able to put the pieces together and maybe save a victim's life.

He wrote free-form now.

 _The Cocassin is a creature both rare and difficult to study. It is fragile, and lives only minutes if not attached to a host. Once dead, it quickly disintegrates to dust, leaving behind a residue of organic compounds. Given its parasitic nature, it likely multiplies via spores, which may lay latent in certain coca plants for long periods of time. Unlike the adult Cocassin, the spores are resilient. Even so, they don't typically survive the usual processing of the coca plant for commercial use such as in glue production._

 _In the case documented here, experimental technology for glue production conducted by Altova Labs, a Government laboratory, likely failed to kill Cocassin spores in glue materials shipped from Guatemala. This allowed these spores to get into the sneakers of two teenagers, attach themselves to the kids' feet, and feed on nutrients from their blood, allowing an adult Cocassin organism to develop and grow._

 _Since the Cocassin requires constant connection to its host, it has developed a mechanism of keeping its host compliant. The Cocassin synthesizes drugs with addictive qualities via a process yet unknown to science. It then injects these drugs in its host, keeping them happy, and at the same time unlocking an immense potential of physical strength in them. To control undesired behavior, the Cocassin withholds the drug injections, forcing its host into withdrawal until the undesired behavior is corrected. In the present case, any attempt to take off the host's sneakers, which would endanger the life of the Cocassin, was punished with severe drug withdrawal symptoms. Eventually, the fear from withdrawal would translate to fear from what caused withdrawal: fear from taking off the sneakers._

 _One of the addictive substances the Cocassin is capable of synthesizing is cocaine. To do so, it can use ingredients found in common sugars and the soft drink Coca Cola, all of which it could acquire from the blood of its host. The host is compelled to consume large amounts of Coca Cola, since failures to procure sufficient amount will result in a failure of the Cocassin to produce and provide the daily dosage of cocaine to its host._

 _The Cocassin and its host exist in perfect symbiotic relationship of codependency._

He had no proofs. Still, a logical conjecture was better than no explanation at all.

Finally, he typed:

 _No information of any kind was found about Altova Labs, the Chula Vista Government laboratory responsible for the processing of the Guatemala glue materials. It is as if it never existed._

A idea occurred to him. He opened up his enhanced _Blue Edition of Google Maps_ and browsed the application for a while. Then, he went back to his report and added:

 _Chula Vista, California, is only a few miles away from the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, a U.S. Government Military Facility._

Not that this fact offered any answers, but it was worth at least a mention.

In the early morning hour, Mulder leaned back and took one last look at his report. Like so many others, it was to be filed away and locked in secrecy.

Classified.

An X-file.

THE END


	16. Note from the author

From the author:

This is the first X-files story I have written. My goal was to make it feel like an actual X-files episode. I tried to keep the conversation between the characters realistic, and to not exaggerate the push-and-pull between them as they struggled to find the truth, each in their own way.

Was I successful? Did this story feel as if you watched an episode?

Fan-fiction writers, like all writers, look for appreciation and feedback. If you liked this story, would you consider writing a comment or two to let me know what you thought?

Thank you for reading it!


	17. To Readers: On Story Updates and Follows

Dear readers,

First of all, thank you for reading this story. I have gotten some very useful feedback from some of you, and I've used it to hopefully make the story flow better. If you are seeing some changes to the story, that's because I've been doing some fixes to it.

Secondly, this story is a C _omplete_ story and not an ongoing series. As such, it doesn't make sense to "follow", since I will NOT be publishing any new developments in it. Folks who have followed it with the expectation of further story line have expressed understandable frustration. Feel free to _un-follow_ the story if you have already read it, so you are not bothered by any updates to it, which will be mostly cosmetic.

I do appreciate reviews, especially if they are constructive! Please do write reviews that _pertain to the story, characters, etc_. Constructive criticism is most welcome!

For any feedback that _does not pertain to the qualities of the story_ , please message me privately. _Please do not clutter the reviews section with personal communication._

I have no way of replying to comments posted as "Guest".

Thank you again!


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